News media urged to report Native American perspective

From left, documentary filmmaker Michael Doxtater, Jose Barreiro, editor of Native Americas, and Leslie Logan, managing editor of Akwe:kon Press meet the media at Akwe:kon April 1 before the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers Conference, April 2-3. Robert Barker/University Photography

By Franklin Crawford

Native American perspectives on issues ranging from land claims to environmental management, to the history of the Americas are often overlooked, oversimplified or simply ignored by the news media.

Seeking to restore balance to coverage of Native issues and perhaps provide fresh insights into current events as seemingly unrelated to Native affairs as the crisis in Kosovo, three distinguished experts on Native American issues met with news media April 1 for an informal session in the community room of Akwe:kon, Cornell's center of Native American culture.

The three speakers were: Leslie Logan, managing editor of the Cornell America Indian Program's Akwe:kon Press; Jose Barreiro, editor of Native Americas, the award-winning journal of Akwe:kon Press, and founding member of the Native American Journalists Association; and Michael Doxtater, writer and-or producer of 20 documentaries for public television in the United States and Canada, who is now a doctoral candidate in education at Cornell.

While events involving Native people and culture have been widely covered in the news media in recent months, entire news articles on land claims or the federal stewardship of leases on Native lands have failed to include, or have inadequately expressed, Native peoples' points of view, the speakers said.

Part of the reason for this is an entrenched stereotype of Native Americans as somehow culturally adrift between the modern and the Native world, Barreiro said. "Many times the media superficially portrays Native Americans as in between two worlds or that once a Native American enters the so-called modern world he ceases to be identified as a Native person. The media portrays this as an either-or proposition, but it's not as simple as that, we're not as fragile as that. Native American culture is a work-in-progress," not a dichotomy, he said.

According to Doxtater, it only makes sense to include the Native American perspective in the news, whether it's about the land claims, the environment or war in Europe.

"Even though we might be a small part of the population, we know something about how to survive," said Doxtater, a Turtle Clan Mohawk born in Niagara Falls, N.Y. "We all need to know something about how ethnic minorities and ethnic majorities live together."

" The Native Americans and their right to self-determination is relevant to issues in the Balkans. And we know something about ethnic cleansing," he said.

The news briefing was offered in conjunction with the third annual Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers Conference held at Cornell April 2-3.